The Official We Shoot Blog
Tuesday, October 18th, 2016
I have a friend (who shall remain nameless) who emphatically states that he never has dust spots on his camera sensor. I, on the other hand, seem to deal with them as a normal byproduct of my workflow.
Photographers have different ways of dealing with dust spots. One spot on a sensor can show up in the same place in hundreds of my images leading me to employ my Photoshop skills to touch them out. Why doesn’t my friend have spots, and I do?
Most photographers with DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have spots because their image-making versatility is enhanced by the ability to change from one lens to another on one camera body, with the attendant risk of foreign objects landing on the sensor by exposing the inner workings of the camera to the dusty, debris-filled environment.
Recently I got a peek at why my friend says he has no dust on his sensor. Each time he swaps his lenses he goes into the camera menu, chooses the setting that locks the mirror up, opens his camera to the air (usually outside) and blows his sensor clean with a bulb puffer. Then he puts on a different lens. Being in surroundings dictated by my clients like landfills, manufacturing, and food-processing plants, I am surrounded by dust, dirt, shavings, and other particles that wreak havoc on my sensor if exposed to them for too long. I change lenses quickly to limit the amount of spots on my sensor.
I just completed a job in a manufacturing plant with much dust in the air and had to clean several dust spots in many images with Photoshop, even though my assistant and I changed lenses in a quick, coordinated effort. Since my client selected a large number of images from this shoot, I had a lot of dust-spot cleaning to do. So, for my next shoot, I’ve decided to try a different tactic for dealing with the spots. A gel stick.
The long, drawn-out “wet” cleaning process can be a risk to the camera sensor, and the gel stick is advertised as a simpler more effective remedy, so I purchased one.
I asked my friend of his interest in a gel stick. He said his method works, and he has no need for a new method. The problem for me is his method doesn’t make sense!
Why? First, sensors are electrostatically charged, attracting dust, and his puffer tool will not dislodge most of the dust from the sensor. Second, he is just blowing outside dust into his camera and may put more dust on the sensor than it had before. And third, his camera is exposed to dust in the air longer due to his “puffing” cleaning process.
So, naturally, I couldn’t fathom how his process didn’t result in more dust on his sensor than on mine.
He offered to send me raw image files of my choice from his Flickr page to prove his point. Dust spots mostly show up against brighter parts of images, so I chose one with lots of sky. Along with the sky image, he sent several images, and indeed he had no dust spots! The images were raw and no changes were made. It didn’t make sense.
Then I noticed in my Bridge program that none of his shots was taken with an aperture tighter than f5.6. I take most of my images at f11 or f16 as I shoot large assemblies that need an overall focus for my client.
So I asked for one of his images taken at f16 or smaller aperture. He balked, but finally went outside and photographed the sky at f4.5, f5.6, and at f20.
I put these images in Photoshop raw editor, tweaking them to look for spots. The result? No spots at the lower f-stops, but the f20 image was loaded. That’s why he has no visible dust spots! He shoots toward the more wide open apertures and the spots are invisible as they are not visible in the depth of field. My dust spots are always visible as I stop down to get maximum DOF to get my entire image sharp.
The moral to the story is while he has a sensor loaded with dust, it does not affect his wide-open images, but his bulb puffer actually does nothing to keep his sensor clean.
Since my commercial shooting can require me to use a full range of f-stops, I will have to occasionally clean my sensor. So, my new Eyelead Gel Stick will do the job with less time and bother than wet cleaning. It isn’t perfect, but it definitely reduces the marks to clean up in post-production. See the images below. The first was shot at f5.6 just to show why, when testing, to shoot at the tightest apertures. The next two were shot at f36. The first of those was shot before cleaning, and the last was shot after only one pass with the gel stick. You be the judge. While I am not recommending you use any gel stick, or even clean your own sensor, I purchased the gel stick I used from this website: https://photographylife.com/product/sensor-gel-stick.
– Gary Silverstein
This image shot At f5.6 before cleaning.
This image was shot at f36 before cleaning
This image was shot at f36 after cleaning with gel stick.
Tuesday, March 15th, 2016
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Macro image of SDHC cards for still and video cameras. Seattle Commercial Photography by We Shoot.
Monday, October 12th, 2015
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Taking A Picture Of An Old Boat With An iPhone. Seattle Commercial Photography by We Shoot.
Thursday, May 29th, 2014
Professional photographers and amateurs alike have many things in common in this digital age: our cameras put the images we take on digital media, such as Compact Flash cards, SD cards, or similar devices. Some of the different methods for extracting the information from these cards are to run a cable (usually USB) to the camera from the computer and we instruct the computer to copy, transfer, or import the images to the computer’s hard drive(s), or we take the digital media card out of the camera and place it in a reader that serves the same function. Some of us have built-in slots in our desktop computers that will accommodate various kinds of cards. My last two computers have had the slots built in.
I’m a professional photographer and videographer. For many shoots, I go on location and have several Compact Flash cards that fit in my still cameras, and the images I shoot are stored on the CF cards awaiting transfer to my computer’s multiple hard drives. Since I usually can’t reshoot the images, and there is much more security in the redundancy of having the files on different drives, I store my images on several external drives simultaneously. Hard drives do fail. There is no excuse for losing a client’s images.
The critical point, however, is that much can happen to the information on the cards during the transfer process. Pulling a card out of a camera that is turned on can corrupt the card, as can pulling a card out of a reader during a copy phase. So, I breathe easier once the images have been copied or imported to my first hard drive without a hitch. Until I have the images on more than one hard drive, however, I keep the images on the card, as well, for backup in case something bad happens.
I recently got a wakeup call, and it was just by chance. I had been using the CF card slot in my PC to copy files from the card to the computer. I didn’t have a job for a little while and I had left the images from the last shoot on the card in the camera after first copying them to several drives on my computer. I put the card back in my camera after copying it. I usually copy to my main drive first, add keywords, my copyright, etc. to the meta data, and then copy all that to a couple more external drives for security.
About a week after I had copied the images on the card I had put back into the camera, I went to reset the camera’s settings for the most likely settings for my next shoot. It showed I still had images on the card, so I hit the view button to see which images were on the card before deleting them, AND, HORRORS, THEY LOOKED BADLY PIXELATED! I looked at several of the images in the camera and most had this problem. I hit the magnify button, and they looked sharp again, but when going back to the “fit on screen” image they again looked pixelated. All I had done was to copy them to the hard drive on my computer. The images that had been copied to the hard drive were in no way affected, but the card seemed to be corrupted. That never happened before.
Luckily, I had already uploaded the finished job to the client the day before, so I knew that the images in the computer were not corrupted.
As a pro, I can’t leave anything to chance, so I had to find out whether the card was bad, the camera had a problem, or what had screwed up the images while the card was in the computer.
My first test was to shoot test images to see what was happening. Once shot, I looked at each at the back of the camera. They looked normal. I turned off the camera, popped the card, and put it in the built-in PC reader. I copied the files to a folder on my desktop, and made sure it was finished copying. I removed the card from the PC. I made a second folder on my desktop. I then used Photoshop to view the images in the first folder on my desktop. They looked OK. I put the card back in the camera and turned the viewer on, and they were corrupted! I took the card out of the camera again, and put it back in the PC and copied the same files to the second folder on my desktop. I clicked on the first image in Photoshop and a dialog box popped up saying that Photoshop could not read the image format. The card was corrupted. Period.
I had an old external USB 2.0 card reader I used to use before having built-in slots, so I dusted it off and plugged it into an open USB slot on my computer. I put the card in the camera again and formatted the card. Again I took some test images. I took the card out of the camera and put it in the external reader. It took longer than the built-in reader, but there weren’t that many images. They copied perfectly. I took the card from the reader and put it back in the camera. I turned on the viewer, and the pictures looked normal, not corrupted. I shut off the camera and again removed the card. I again copied the files to another folder on my desktop – they could be opened in Photoshop and looked normal.
I determined that the built-in reader in the PC was corrupting the images while copying. I don’t know why: was it software, or hardware? I determined that the best way around the problem was to not use the built-in slots again on this computer, but to bypass them. I had lost faith in them. However, the USB 2.0 external reader is incredibly slow. I also use my readers for HD video on SDHC cards, and it takes forever to import video files. So, I decided to buy a new USB 3.0 external reader. I found one on B&H’s website for $14.95 (with no shipping) at http://bhpho.to/SVr845 . I ordered it and tried it out with all my different media from different cameras. It seems to work well, and it is blazing fast compared with USB 2.0.
The moral of the story is: Don’t be complacent about your digital photography equipment. Don’t assume all is well without checking it out occasionally. I could have gotten a bad surprise if I hadn’t looked at my camera, and taken action. Being a pro, you’ve got to be on your toes!
– Gary Silverstein
Saturday, December 15th, 2012
Let’s talk about the art of bracketing. Bracketing is taking the same image at several different exposures so you are sure to get the detail you desire in your images during digital post-production. You may want to use high dynamic range (HDR) features in your computer software or camera to combine the exposures into one homogenous image, preserving both shadow and highlight detail from all the different exposures. Or, if you prefer, you can use editing program masking techniques which allow the use of layers to achieve the same goal, but with more of a standard photographic look to your work. HDR is sometimes difficult to work with to get an image that looks like what we have come to accept as “a photographic look,” and instead seems to have the feel of an illustration.
You can bracket manually, or some cameras will allow automatic bracketing in their menus. My work cameras will allow 3, 5, 7, or 9 images to be taken automatically at a set rate of exposure variance, which I can specify (generally for me at 2/3 of a stop). Using this method, I usually set the camera to alter the shutter speed from overexposed to underexposed. I recommend shooting in aperture priority and altering the shutter speed as it keeps the aperture the same. If you bracket by changing the aperture, sizes of things in the resulting images will be slightly larger or smaller in each exposure depending on the aperture dimension. This will make it difficult to properly align each image. I don’t recommend hand-holding the camera as it introduces camera shake and misalignment and, therefore, I usually use a tripod for bracketing.
In future posts, I will be touching more on bracketing and working with strobes, and hot lights, and how you can work on these in an editing program.
-Gary Silverstein
Monday, October 1st, 2012
In the days of film, a professional commercial photographer had to be very careful of the backgrounds that would be used in his/her images. Retouching was expensive. Shooting an item for use against another background from the one it was taken with could be a labor-intensive multi-step process. A spot on a high-key (pure white) background could be touched out on the negative, and a nightmare undertaking on a transparency. Today, of course, images are taken digitally and manipulated by editing programs, like Photoshop. One of our most recent shoots involved large, heavy industrial products. In film-days past, we would have probably used a seamless white background to shoot the product and spent a lot of time with product placement. The items to be photographed were round, between two and three feet in diameter, and each weighed 500 or more pounds. Five views were to be taken of each. That means that either the item would have to be moved on the background, or very carefully lifted by a hoist onto the background. We would have to be careful of marks left by the items where they rested on the paper, and some method of keeping such round items from rolling off the surface would have to be employed and kept out of sight.
So, pre-planning for the shoot is still important, even in this digital world. We opted to not use any type of manufactured background per se, but to only use white reflectors in strategic places to reflect light or add a highlight where we desired. Not using a background simplified the lighting somewhat in that a roll of paper or fabric didn’t block out the light from behind each item. We were going to photograph the items in the factory environment with the idea that we would isolate the image in Photoshop, and put it on another, more desirable background.
Lighting was done with our powerful studio strobes, and the modeling lights on the strobes gave us an idea of how the lighting would look in the finished image. We shot with soft-boxes to give a square look to our lighting in the highlights, as umbrellas just wouldn’t cut it here as these products were light-reflective. We planned to keep the camera stationary, move the lights as necessary, and rotate the product for the five different angles the customer required. Since the objects were circular, and we wanted to keep all the images the same size, we had to plan how to keep that proportionality. Think of a coin stood on edge. The widest the image would have to be is a little more than the diameter when one of the faces of the coin is toward you. When the edge of the coin is nearer to you, the size of the image could change, but we wanted to make them all the same size for the client’s ease of putting together several views of their product. Also, we had to be far enough away to assure depth of field when we were shooting the views that showed part of the object furthest away. Editing programs have great sharpening utilities, but a severely out-of-focus image cannot be brought back. You can easily blur parts of a sharp image and make it look good if needed for the effect, but the reverse isn’t the case. So all this had to be figured out in advance.
Now, let’s go on to the backgrounds for the images. Since the area or table on which the items were shot was in a fixed location, the background for each image (as produced by the camera) would have been a toolbox and other parts of the assembly plant. So we made it so that we and our client could “lift” the item off the background and put it on any other background or even a video. This is done by means of a “clipping path.” This is a very labor-intensive process. It means that I use a Photoshop tool to painstakingly trace out every edge of the product at anywhere from a 100% to a 300% enlargement. Once I have outlined every hole, edge, and cranny, I “select” the item alone and make a layer of it to put on other backgrounds. I include this clipping path with the image, so the client is able to do the same. Now, you may ask why I do so much work, as some of the editing programs have become pretty sophisticated and make an easier selection with other, faster tools. Well, the answer is this: I have used these editing tools, and sometimes there are errors in the program choosing what is part of the item and what is not. It may not be noticeable on a small jpeg on a website, but it will stick out like a sore thumb on a 30X40 enlargement at a trade show. That is what separates a pro from an amateur. Below are an original view of one of the products, and a few different backgrounds that I feel work well. Each background below was created in Photoshop, but other backgrounds could be used, as well. Remember that whichever one a client chooses, I include the clipping path so they can put it against another background if that is their need.
As you can see, the product image looks at home with any of the backgrounds. Keep this in mind as you plan your next shoot.
– Gary Silverstein
Saturday, June 26th, 2010
As I sit here, an old friend comes to mind. A camera repairman in Los Angeles. Whenever I had any trouble with a camera, I’d go to Marvin. He may have been around fixing cameras for Ansel Adams back in the day, as far as I know. He knew everything – and I mean everything – about cameras and their operation. I often think of how great he was at his job in his off-the-beaten-path repair shop, and how so many people weren’t aware of his business, and didn’ t know of his talent.
I knew another talented professional – an auto repairman – who got lost in the shuffle because of his far-out location. His customers relied upon him every time they needed a repair. On occasion, they’d mention him to a friend, but in this busy world many of us neglect to talk of such things to others and, like so many professionals, this repairman had days when no business came in, as was the case with my camera repairman.
One day, I got a call from the auto repairman requesting I take a photograph of him to accompany a newspaper ad about his business. I suggested an image of him working over a car engine, and even though many newspaper ads don’t work, this one did. People shuffle through their paper and flip through their magazines. They barely take notice of their trade periodicals, oftentimes not even noticing the articles, let alone the ads. Why did this one work? I’d like to think it was because of this picture, and maybe it was. New customers responding to the ad would mention it when they called for an appointment or when they came in to see him. “What a cool picture!” And as they got to know him, they’d say, “watching you work on my car reminds me of that newspaper photograph.” Apparently the image seemed to say to them, “I care about what I’m doing. I care about doing a good job.”
In the case of this wonderful automotive technician, they were right. This mechanic cared, just like my camera mechanic cared. Did the photo say that to the people who responded to the ad? Apparently so. Looking at it from that viewpoint, it’s not necessarily advertising that brings in the work, but the kind of advertising. In this case, advertising with photography. (An interesting anecdote: no customer seemed to recall that the photograph was accompanied by an ad, even though it obviously was since it brought the new customer to his business, but the picture was what stood out.)
What made the image work? Was it the sparkle in his eye – made even more luminous by our professional strobes? Was it the highlight on his wrench – made even more powerful with my assistant’s precise positioning of the mechanic’s hand? Whatever it was, without the picture, the ad in this case may not have even been noticed.
There are many professionals like these two mechanics. Do you know of some? If so, reach out to them. Tell everyone about them. Hey, even better. Take his or her picture. A good one . . . shot with care.
– Dione Benson
Thursday, June 24th, 2010
Without a doubt, the hardest single thing I ever photographed was, of all things, something so ubiquitous that we handle them every day. I am talking about door knobs. Plain, highly reflective, brass doorknobs. Now, why is it so hard to photograph a doorknob? Well, it becomes a lot more difficult when there are some rules. Rules like one would run into with a doorknob manufacturer looking for someone to shoot images of their products for promotions. Do you think they want a reflected image of a happy, smiling distorted photographer looking out from their new brochure at the viewer? How about seeing that photographer’s camera and tripod, or the space the doorknob happens to be in? Simple, inexpensive, plain, highly polished brass doorknobs become painful to contemplate as a product photographer. They not only are spherical and reflect the entire world around them, they have a backing plate made of the same stuff, that will reflect things that exist behind the knob, from the reflection on the back of the knob.
Several years ago, we had spoken with a potential client, the marketing department head at a large manufacturer of doorknobs, hardware, and faucets about working for her company. She said she had several photographers she used for shooting these products, but she said she would send us a sample of their products so that we could submit a test photograph to show that we could handle this type of photography, in case she needed our services. Parameters for shooting this product were clear. Shoot it on a 4″X 5″ transparency, and no retouching of any kind was permitted. She said they did any retouching needed at the graphics department at the manufacturer.
About 5 days later, the product arrived by UPS. There was a plain brown cardboard box inside the outer package. I opened it up and beheld a photographic nightmare. It was an inexpensive, highly-polished brass doorknob set, complete with keys.
It reflected everything! It saw me, the room, everything in the room, and to my horror, the backing plate re-reflected everything the back of the knob “saw.” I knew this was to be a fight. I looked at images of doorknobs in advertising. They looked perfect. Some were “brushed” metal – not polished, but still shiny. Some were dull finished, and just reflected highlights. The polished ones stood out. No reflections of photographers, cameras, tripods, rooms, etc. I assumed that there was some reflection of a camera lens somewhere during the taking of the image, as there was no way to avoid the reflection from the angle presented. A different angle may have allowed one to position the lens where the reflection would be positioned over the keyhole, but you can’t shoot there for different angles. The first problem includes camera, tripod and photographer reflections. One way to avoid this taking up a lot of room on the doorknob is to make a blind out of white material, like foam core, and cut a hole through which the camera lens “sees” the doorknob.
Although this cuts down on untoward reflections, it still reflects the lens and the hole, unless the hole is dark and tight around the lens. I figured this made for a minimum of retouching at the graphics department, and would be acceptable. A second consideration was the lighting. Lights or hot spots show up on the product itself and a smooth highlight with no hot spots would be a better solution. Everything I tried did not work! As said before, putting a piece of foam core in front of the doorknob cut down reflections, but I thought that aiming lights from behind the doorknob and bouncing the light toward the white foam core blind would produce the effect without bad reflections. I was wrong. The strobe “soft boxes” reflected into the back side of the door knob and re-reflected off the backing plate. I had distorted oblong light reflections staring at me from the backing plate.
It became evident there must be a way to do this. I tried white sheets, but the lights created hot spots, and it reflected any corners and folds. I had seen a shooting tent at my local pro camera store, and headed down there next. A tent like this was used to evenly light small products and I thought this was the ticket. It cost $250.00 plus tax. I got the tent home, and assembled it. It was made of a translucent white fabric, meant to diffuse the light inside. It also was rigid and had seams and a rigid frame inside the fabric which showed up in the reflections. It had several holes for camera placement, and try as I might with stuff to cover them, they showed up, too. Fortunately, I was able to return the tent for a refund as it really didn’t do the job.
I even talked to man who owned a company that made plastic blister packs in Santa Barbara. I drove out to Santa Barbara to get a prototype dome of a transparent, but clouded plastic that he was thinking of producing. It took out most of the distracting reflections, but reflected the cloudy nature of the dome and made the doorknob appear dull and not highly reflective. I sent it back to Santa Barbara with a thank you note and a description of the effect.
I finally built a box enclosure of translucent white plastic, got what I thought was a good image and sent that to the marketing manager. She said to keep the doorknob, and she would call us if she needed us. Last I heard, she was working for another company doing something completely different. She never called!
Below is the image I created, after scanning it and retouching it for our portfolio. Shiny, reflective doorknobs are tough. Try it if you doubt me.
– Gary Silverstein
Doorknob with minimal reflections - click on image to enlarge
Saturday, June 19th, 2010
I was once asked about the hardest thing I ever photographed. Of course there have been several difficult things to shoot, but as a commercial photographer, some product and catalog shoots and reflective objects just jump out. Reflecting on a number I have done, I think they have gotten a bit easier for me with time, either because of experience, or the ability to use digital retouching and enhancement techniques, or both. To say that there are no more challenges would be a misstatement, however.
My first bout with reflective product shots came during the era of film, long before digital capture or scanning was even possible. Digital retouching was a pipe dream for the future. I was asked to photograph jewelry with a large-format view camera (a 4X5) on transparencies. We opted to use our then-considered-powerful 1200 watt-second Balcar studio strobe set for lighting.
The jewelry pieces were white metal (silver, I think) and included rings, earrings, and a necklace. All pieces were to be shot in one image, laid out on a blue fabric. I was to capture highlights from the reflecting white umbrellas mounted on the strobes in each piece of jewelry in the layout.
In those days, we were located just south of Hollywood, California, and there were many film labs nearby, so film processing turnover was fairly fast – three hours on a non-rush basis. We had 4X5 Polaroid self- processing black and white positives that could be shot with the 4X5 camera that we could see as proofs prior to shooting the transparencies which needed processing at a lab.
The Polaroids were over a dollar each, in those days – a big, but necessary expense. For this shoot, we went through something like ten of them, just trying to position the irregularly-shaped jewelry, so it would show certain highlights. Each time we shot one, we would find one piece that would go dark, with no highlight. It would have no sparkle, it would look, well . . . black! We finally got what looked like a good Polaroid, put in the transparency film holders and shot four transparencies of the same shot (one for us, one for the client, and two for insurance in case we needed to lighten or darken the exposure by chemical process). We ran it to the lab up the road, and three hours later went over there to see our new transparencies. One of the pieces of jewelry had moved slightly and it went dark. There went a bunch of money, and a lot of time. It took until the next day before we got it right. It was a good experience, and I learned a lot. I managed to find the image in our archives. See it below.
– Gary Silverstein
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